By H. W. Cottrell, President of Western Oregon Conference
WHEN our Lord was on earth, critics inquired of Him whether or not taxes should be paid to Caesar—civil government. He replied, “Show Me the tribute money. And they brought unto Him a penny. And He saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto Him, Caesar’s. Then saith He unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar [civil government] the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Matt. 22: 17-21.
The Master herein recognized the rights of both God and Caesar, divine and civil government, Church and State. He designed to impress upon the minds of those critics, and humanity throughout all time, that there are civil governmental rights by divine injunction, which should be rendered to civil government by each individual; and that there are other natural, inherent, unalienable, God-given, individual rights, due to be rendered in worship to God only, with which civil government can by right have nothing to do.
In Eden there was divine government only. The transgression of divine law introduced sin into the world. Sin brought selfishness—loss of respect for the rights of others. In order that the outworking of inward selfishness might be restrained, and the invader of the rights of others punished, God ordained civil government, with human authority, to protect every man in the enjoyment of his natural, inherent, divinely given rights. Especially did He ordain civil government for the protection of the weak against the strong, the minority against the majority, the one lone individual against mob violence, that each might enjoy his God-given liberty to worship God, or not to worship Him, according to the dictates of his own conscience, as he may elect.
In the utterance, “Render therefore unto Caesar [civil government] the things which are Caesar’s,” our Lord declares, most specifically, that when man has rendered due allegiance to civil government, by rendering to it “the things” that pertain thereto, there then remains certain other allegiance which it is the individual’s duty to render to God direct. Thus Jesus placed bounds defining the limit of Caesar’s legislation. He spoke authoritatively in defining this limitation to civil authority, and from His statement there can be no appeal.
Mr. Bancroft, in his “History of the Constitution of the United States,” accords so perfectly with Christ’s decision on limitation of rights of civil legislation, that I quote:
“The AMERICAN CONSTITUTION, in harmony with the people of the several States, WITHHELD from the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT the POWER to INVADE the HOME OF REASON, the citadel of CONSCIENCE, the SANCTUARY of the SOUL; and not from indifference, but that the infinite Spirit of eternal truth might move in its freedom and purity and power.”—Last chapter.
The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States says:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Ex-President Roosevelt, in an address delivered at Oxford University, England, on the occasion of the conferring of the degree of D.C.L. by the university, said:
“True liberty showed itself to best advantage in protecting the rights of others, and especially of minorities.”
God alone can enter the realm of and deal with questions of religion and conscience, for such are results of inward promptings of the soul. Civil government can not enter the realm of conscience, nor can it even make a fair pretense, unless the stocks, thumbscrews, and fagot should be reinstalled.
Every individual has a natural right to think, to draw conclusions, to speak, and to live out his conviction of conscience, in religious or non-religious matters, provided in so doing he does not invade the equal rights of his fellow men.
Church and State
The personnel of the church receive their gifts and grants from God; “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” James 1:17. The Sabbath is a good and perfect gift, hence comes from God to men, and not from State or nation. All gifts pertaining to the church or religion come “down from the Father” above, not from men beneath; come from the divine throne, not from Congress, Parliament, or legislature.
The duty of the State and nation is to legislate upon civil matters, thus to make and enforce laws for the protection of life, liberty, and all other inherent rights within the power of man to take from his fellow man, and not to invade rights. The man who is not willing to protect the same rights and liberties for others which he asks for himself, and to require them at the seat of civil government, has not a true appreciation of liberty.
Sabbath (Sunday) legislation is religious legislation. Such legislation is wrong, if for no other reason, because it is class legislation. It is in the interest of that class of citizens who observe Sunday as a day of rest and worship, and is an invasion of the equal rights and liberties of other classes of citizens who choose to rest and worship on another day of the week. And it also trenches upon the liberties of another very large class of citizens who choose not to be religious.
Jesus said, “Render . . . unto God the things that are God’s.” No candid person will deny that the Sabbath is God’s. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” It must be received from God, not from the State. It must be rendered to God, and not to the State or nation. Then why should ministers of the Gospel of Christ be clamoring for Sunday legislation in the interest of Christianizing the working men, when civil legislation can not give spiritual life?
Sabbath-keeping is an act of worship, and is spiritual, and due to be rendered to God. The State can not enforce true worship, because true worship is spiritual, and the State can not discern the motives of the hearts of men.
Sabbath legislation is religious legislation; and religious legislation is an unlawful union of Church and State, and is a carnal invasion10of the inherent rights of all men, whether they are Christians or whether they are not. It is an invasion of the God-given liberty of the non-Christian, for it would compel him to act one day in seven as if he were a Christian, when he is not. True worship and Sabbath-keeping are prompted by the inflowing of God's love into men's hearts, not by force — civil authority.
Representatives of the Lord's Day Alliance, National Reform Association, Men and Religion Forward Movement, and kindred orders, are advocating State and national Sunday legislation under “color” of relief to postal clerks, carriers, factory employees, and working people in general, as if they were seeking for them one day in every week for physical rest. The day of rest thus sought by civil legislation is either a Sabbath or a holiday. If a Sabbath is desired, it is not within the purview of the State to legislate upon that question; for the Sabbath is God's; it must be received from Him, and rendered to Him. If a holiday, it should have no religious restrictions or penalties attached thereto, but every man should be free to rest or not upon the day, as he may elect to do, as upon other holidays.
H. W. COTTRELL.
Empty Pulpits and Empty Pews
"WHEN the pulpit is not filled, is it any wonder the pews are empty?"
The Reformation and Liberty
By L. A. Reed
(Continued from page 5)
freedom of conscience, a question of the rule of the church through the State. A compromise was proposed. There was to be no further carrying forward of the Reformation in States which had not yet accepted it. Protestantism was to be confined to the territory where it already existed. But the princes declared: "Let us reject this decree. In matters of conscience the majority has no power." To protect liberty of conscience is the duty of the State, and this is the limit of its authority in matters of religion. The matter of the jurisdiction of the State in matters of religion could not be more clearly outlined than in this protest of the princes.
And when, against this principle, the emperor declared that the decree was a settled thing, and submission was the only thing left, the princes brought their protest directly to the national council. Among other things, this protest declared:
"We protest by these presents, before God, our only Creator, Preserver, Redeemer, and Saviour, and who will one day be our Judge, as well as before all men and all creatures, that we, for us and our people, neither consent nor adhere in any manner whatever to the proposed decree in anything that is contrary to God, to His Word, to our right conscience, or to the salvation of our souls."
Just as noble a stand was taken by John Knox in Scotland. His words were just as clear, and the issue was just as plainly joined. When he was brought face to face with the queen of Scotland, in whose presence the zeal of many a leader of the Protestants had abated, he stood unmoved. He was not to be won by caresses; he did not quail before threats. The queen charged him with heresy. He had been teaching the people to receive a religion prohibited by the State. She declared that he had therefore transgressed the Word which commands subjects to obey their princes. Knox answered firmly:
"As right religion received neither its origin nor its authority from princes, but from the eternal God alone, so are not subjects bound to frame their religion according to the tastes of their princes. For oft it is that princes, of all others, are the most ignorant of God's true religion. If all the seed of Abraham had been of the religion of Pharaoh, whose subjects they long were, I pray you, madam, what religion would there have been in the world? And if all in the days of the apostles had been of the religion of the Roman emperors, I pray you, madam, what religion would there have been now upon the earth? . . . And so, madam, you may perceive that subjects are not bound to the religion of their princes, altho they are commanded to give them reverence."
On these lines the battle was fought everywhere; and by the heroism of such men, and their uncompromising loyalty to the truth, a great light broke that banished the ages of darkness, and set the world to moving forward with an impetus it had not known before. Upon its glorious, wide-spread principles was based American liberty of conscience.
The principle is clear; it has been learned by years of sorrow and anguish; it has been paid for with the price of blood. It should be held by every soul to-day as the great heritage of Christianity.
To compromise now is for us to go back and repeat the sad mistakes of the Dark Ages. For us to reunite Church and State is for us to go back and tread the same dark, weary way that is marked in its every step by heart-pangs and human suffering, by fires of the martyrs and the blood of saints.
Here is the great lesson for all succeeding ages; here is the great lesson for our own time. The power of evil is working against God and His Word exactly the same to-day as it did then. It is as much opposed to the Scriptures' being made the guide of life as in the sixteenth century. There is need to-day for a return to the great Protestant principle, the Bible and the Bible only as the rule of faith and duty. To-day there is a subtle working to bring men under the rule of custom and doctrine foreign to the Word of God. The same unswerving fidelity and uncompromising adherence to the great principle that gave birth and life to the Reformation is needed now. It is the only hope of the maintenance of a free conscience, of religious liberty.
God give us to-day men with the same uncompromising principle and unsullied faith that Luther had when he could answer before the diet in the words of the Spirit of God. God grant us to-day unyielding men like the princes of Germany, to protest against every compromise of the Christian faith. God grant us men like John Knox, who will not quail before kings or queens or rulers, and guided by loyalty to principle, count not their lives dear, that they may remain true to Christ. God grant us the same freedom of soul exemplified by our great Head, the living Christ, who, threatened by Pilate with the power of Rome, could caution him with and apprise him of the great fact of each soul's responsibility to God.
The just shall live by his faith.
Then, as now, each one of us is to show, if we will, our unswerving allegiance to the great principles of Protestantism, the great life-giving power of the Reformation, pure and holy faith in the Word of God alone, scorning all temptations to resort to the laws of the State to enforce religious customs or practises of any kind whatsoever.
L. A. REED.
Ministering Men or Angels?
By Delwin Rees Buckner
By Delwin Rees Buckner
At times at eventide, in glen or glade,
Alone upon a robber-ridden road,
Afar from any mortal man's abode,
My heart hath fluttered in its cage, afraid;
But as I've knelt upon my knees and prayed
That God would take away the pricking goad
That tortured me with fear, there oft hath glowed
The torch of some wayfarer, come to aid.
"Was it an angel?" frequently I ask.
And then I think: Was there a lighted roll
Between the fingers where one holds the pen?
His pocket partly hid a fire-filled flask?
His speech was spiced with words that damn the soul?
For angels do not thus appear to men.
A Religious Act
As MEN rise higher in the spiritual scale, they will, we believe, come to see that toleration is per se a religious act, and not a mere convention based on weakness or convenience or indolence. They will find that they can yield full liberty of conscience to others without yielding up or weakening their own faith. This may not be logical, but it is something better than that useful but over-honored little foot rule. It is the state of mind to which the sanest, noblest, most spiritual, and so most religious men in all the Christian creeds have always, consciously or unconsciously, tended.—London "Spectator."
Christ Is the Wisdom and Power of God
IF Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God in the experience of those who trust and love Him, there needs no further argument of His divinity.—H. W. Beecher.
—★—
The Tears and Tenderness of Christ
By Alexander Maclaren
The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."—Alexander Maclaren.
The Tiger or the Lamb
By Editor
A MODERN revivalist, a few years ago, gave a lecture on “The Tiger or the Lamb.” A masterly talk it was, on the relative value of love versus brute force in saving souls. He illustrated this by his own experience in the Five Points Mission in New York City. He found, on going there, a neat little chapel, carpeted, cozy, and convenient as a building; but few came to the meetings. Those who needed saving were driven away. The rough element would destroy the carpet and deface the furniture.
In this vicinity was the headquarters of what the gang of disreputables composing it called themselves, “The Devil’s Nine;” and the name was honest in intent and true in fact. One of the rules regarding their headquarters was that nothing should be brought in or used that was got honestly. It must be obtained through robbery or theft. The gang was a terror to that part of the city.
But the young minister, believing that Jesus Christ died to save souls who needed saving, and that the mission was founded and supported that the Master might so use it, meeting several of the “Devil’s Nine” in a group one day, asked them to his meetings at the mission. The leader of the gang queried, “Do you mean it, domine?” “Surely I do,” replied the minister. “We’ll be there,” was the response. And they came, “horse, foot, and dragoons.”
It is needless to recount all their disorder. The respectable missionaries were horrified. The neat carpet was taken up. The gang talked, laughed, badgered the minister, played cards, chewed tobacco, spit on the floor, indulged in rough horse-play; and all this during service, while the minister was preaching. Again and again, the young man of God tells us, he was tempted, as the tiger rose within him, to eject them by force, but the thought would persist and dominate that Christ’s mission is to save. So, dispirited and almost discouraged, he would give at the close of each service the cheery invitation, “Come again, boys.” And the response always was, “We will, domine.” He almost wished sometimes that they would say, “We will not come again.”
It seemed the purpose of the devil to wear out the patience and love of Christ in His servant. Their actions grew worse. Seemingly there was no impression made. One night their devilishness seemed to reach the climax. All the tiger within this strong, athletic minister burned to act. But again came a vision of the cross: Christ died for these; and the strong man broke and wept like a child. One of the boys said something disrespectful, and the leader of the gang took his slouch-hat and struck him over the head, and told him to shut up,—the first sign of encouragement the minister had received from the time they first entered the little mission chapel. When he told them at the close of the service to “come again, boys,” the answer was in a different tone. The daredevil of it was gone, and in a subdued and quiet manner the leader responded, “We will.” And they came, came to listen, to think, to receive. And the result of it all was that every one of the “Devil’s Nine” became the Lord’s own—all won not by force, not by compulsion, but by the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Would that all ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ might know the strength of the love of the Lamb. John, in holy vision, was told to look for the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He looked, and saw a Lamb slain. The love and the sacrifice are stronger than the power and terror of the lion. If Christians could see that, they would not be asking for legislation to further the cause of the Master; they would be pleading on their knees for more of the love of Christ.
What Is Proposed
Do You Wish It?
THE present movements toward a union of Church and State are by no means new. The National Reform movement, now operating especially under the International Christian Citizenship movement, is a half-century old. Its object is to place all "Christian laws and usages" "on an undeniable legal basis in the fundamental law of the land." They believe that they will avoid all the troubles of the past if their object carries. This is what one of their leading propagandists and a vice-president said in the Christian Statesman (the organ of the association) January 13, 1887:
"It is not to have the Government set up some CORRUPT church establishment, and then lay its hand on everything that does not conform to it. This is what caused the persecutions in the Old World. Our remedy for all these malefic influences is to have the Government simply set up the MORAL LAW, and recognize GOD’S AUTHORITY behind it, and LAY ITS HAND ON ANY RELIGION THAT DOES NOT CONFORM TO IT. . . . Besides, this is the ONLY WAY human and divine authority can exercise their separate offices in peace. The only way they can be harmonized and kept from conflicting, is to say that GOD KNOWS BEST, AND MAKE HUMAN AUTHORITY SUBORDINATE TO THE DIVINE."
This is not a lone utterance. The object of the Christian Citizenship movement is the same to-day as then. Its utterances of today are equally strong. Somehow, they do not see the logical outworking of their purpose. Let us examine the above.
1. Never a church establishment existed which did not become corrupt connected with civil power. The eminent Dr. Philip Schaff has well said that secular power has proved a satanic gift to the church, and ecclesiastical power has proved an engine of tyranny in the hands of the State.
2. What would the Government set up as "the moral law"? Would it be the Decalogue of the Bible? That has been defined in some of the great church creeds as the moral law. But other great religious bodies, like the Disciples, believe the moral law to be abolished. Therefore upon the Disciples the Government would "lay its hand."
3. Again, the moral law declares that "the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." Would Government enforce its observance? This is not the object of the National Reformers. Their object is to enforce the observance of the first day by law. The Government would therefore find itself obliged to decide a religious controversy, become a legal interpreter of God’s law, put itself between the conscience of the individual and its Maker, and make otherwise good men and citizens criminals for conscience’ sake.
4. For this they would not have God’s Word or law, but human interpretation of that law. They would not have God’s authority behind it, but human authority of law and force, of fine and jail.
5. God has ordained human government to govern humans in human things. It is an utter perversion of Christianity to give any government authority in the things of religion. The nearest to the ideal of what a government ought to be in the light of Christianity is our own national Government, knowing no religious test, having no power to establish any religion or prohibit its free exercise. It does have power to compel civility, man’s conduct toward man. Under that scheme of government, religion has prospered as in no time of the ages. Men have had the privilege, as they have the right, to stand face to face with God.
6. It is best to say that "God knows best," but no human power can compel human authority to submit to the divine. It can compel an outward acquiescence, it may make men act as hypocrites, but it can not change the heart.
7. The result of religio-civil legislation is to make criminals of the best of citizens. In conversation some years ago with an old National Reformer, he admitted that religious laws, in their very nature, would be considered the most sacred of obligations due to a government acting in God’s stead. If officials felt this, it would be important that such laws be enforced. Dissenters would be regarded as working against the highest interests of society and government. If milder penalties failed, severer would follow, till finally the "contumacy" and stubbornness of the conscientious dissenter would be counted treason and punishable with death. A noted archbishop in this country said, "The violator of a Sunday law is the worst of criminals;" and for "the worst of criminals," the punishment is death.
Reader, are you in favor of such a régime?
Sunday Baseball Games in New Jersey
In Plainfield, New Jersey, on a recent Sunday, a large crowd assembled to witness a baseball game. Certain of the clergy had determined that no more Sunday baseball should be played in that place, and those in favor of the game had also determined that they would defy the decision of the clergymen.
The crowd assembled and the game was called, and a clergyman with a deputy sheriff appeared. The clergyman went to the umpire of the game, and told him that the deputy had warrants for the arrest of each and every one who would presume to commence playing. A wrangle ensued, and as this was delaying the game, the crowd of spectators became impatient, started after the minister and the sheriff, and drove them off the field. The sheriff soon stepped to one side, and the crowd passed him by, but they followed the minister clear to his house. Nearly exhausted, he got inside and barricaded his door, and thus escaped falling into the hands of the angry and indignant people. The deputy went back to the players that had remained on the field, and persuaded them that since nearly all their crowd had gone in pursuit of the preacher, it would be best for them not to attempt to play.
The ministers and people who were supporting the idea of stopping the playing of baseball on Sunday would doubtless affirm that the players as well as the spectators were sinners in need of salvation. They would tell you that if these people were what they should be they would not be either playing ball on Sunday or watching those who were playing.
Impending Earthquakes.
A bulletin from the University of California says that warnings of impending earthquakes may some day be given, just as the weather bureau warns of coming storms. It also says that "no part of the earth's surface is exempt from these tremors." They think that along what is called "faults," or fault lines, shafts and tunnels could be sunk, and microphones installed that would give warnings. In the first eleven months of the present instruments in use at the University of California, eighty-nine earthquakes were recorded. Many of these had come from immense distances, and had traveled half way around the world. It may be true that men may forewarn concerning some of these great convulsions of nature, but they can not stay them; and He whose Word is true tells us that sometime there will come the "great earthquake," in the which the cities of the nations shall fall, and earth's kingdom of sin shall come to an end.
Against Enforcing Sunday Observance
Those people in Plainfield who were trying to stop the ball game think that Sunday is the Sabbath, and hence they go forth to make war on those who would desecrate what they regard as a holy day. But what is the result of that minister's action? He places himself where he can have no possible influence for good over the large number in that community who think they have a right to play on Sunday if they so desire. He and the community are at war with each other in a way that is out of harmony with every principle of Gospel truth.
The observance of Sunday is a religious dogma. Try to disguise it as you will, but the fact remains just the same. No matter whether it be the Sabbath that the Bible teaches, or not, it is always wrong to try to enforce it by civil law. It can do no possible good, and all the evils in the whole realm of intolerance and religious persecutions are bound to be the final result of such a procedure.
Would that ministers of the Gospel would learn the simple truth of these clear and definite words of the Almighty: "'Tho we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds); casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ; and being in readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall be made full.'" 2 Cor. 10:3-6. T.
Let Us Suppose It
By Editor
DR. GEORGE W. GRANNIS, secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance, said in a speech in San Jose February 14:
"Suppose we succeed to the utmost limit of our desire in everything else we are attempting to do, and then wake up to the realization that the greed for gain, the desire for sports, and the love of pleasure, take from us what little of the Lord's day [Sunday] remains; how are we going to hold anything that we have achieved? It is absolutely essential for everything for which the church stands. Man must first of all have a day for worship, a day for rest, a day of freedom from the ordinary grind of daily toil."
Now if Dr. Grannis's argument amounts to anything, it means that we will lose all that we have gained in Christianity unless the Sunday is preserved. It is not mere freedom from toil that he asks; it is not a holiday that he is demanding. It is a day of worship recognized in the law as such. There are many who prefer to attend some sport, as baseball, on that day, and find in it recreation. There are many that seek the pleasure of the woods and the groves and the streams and the mountains, and find in that the keenest zest and recreation. But that in no wise would help the worship day which Dr. Grannis demands. If there is anything to his logic at all, of the preservation of a holy day by law, it must be by a law that will, just as far as humanity can compel, coerce humanity into the appearance of observing the day as a sacred day. But that is utterly impossible, in the very nature of the case. Men may be compelled to stop work on that day, they may even be compelled to attend church; but no man can be compelled to worship or to love the day. That must be voluntary, and of God; and a law compelling men to do what they do not wish to do is a law that will carry them farther away from Christianity than they were. Every attempt to secure a proper Sabbath observance by human law has proved ineffectual, and ever will. The Pharisaic observance of the Sabbath is condemned in the Bible. The worship of God is always voluntary.
Not Law-Abiding
By Editor
WILLIAM D. HAYWOOD, the head of the Industrial Workers of the World, is very frank as to where he stands. In his speech at Cooper, Indiana, on December 21, he is reported to have said:
"Can you wonder that I despise the law? I understand the class struggle. I am not a law-abiding citizen. More than that, I do not believe you here ought to be law-abiding citizens. . . . Let us Socialists be frank. We want to overthrow the capitalist system and establish in its place an industrial democracy. Why then say we are law-abiding?"
Surely if that is what the Industrial Workers of the World stand for, as set forth by their chief spokesman, they ought not to complain if they are met by the violent means which is at the disposal of the law enforcement officers. We could understand, and can understand, how men may not agree with laws upon the statute-books, how they may feel and know that some of these laws are in favor of the classes and against the masses; but it does not necessarily follow, even in the face of this, that a man can not be law-abiding. He may use every legitimate means in his power to protest against the law and to endeavor to change the law, but at the same time he may be law-abiding. Surely one forfeits his right to citizenship in any land who will make such a declaration as it is reported Mr. Haywood made.
Religion in Public Schools
By Editor
The Free Methodist Oregon Conference, in recent session, condemned dancing in public schools, and demanded that the Bible and religious instruction be reinstated in the public schools of the country. They believe that the divorcement in respect to Christian principles as obtaining in our public schools at the present time is largely due to the Catholic Church; but the demand for the Bible and religion in the public schools on the part of this Free Methodist Conference justifies all the demand that the Catholics have ever made for public money to support parochial schools. Logically, from every view-point, religion and the teaching of religion ought to be eliminated from public schools. A resolution was adopted asking the President of the United States to require persons of any and all denominations who are in the employ of Government schools to lay aside all distinctive religious garb during school hours.
According to the compilations from the New York census, illiteracy has decreased in America during the last ten years, the percentage falling from 10.7 to 7.7. Illiteracy is greatest in the South. Iowa has the lowest per cent of illiteracy of any State, 1.7. New York, with its tremendous influx of foreigners, stands at 5.5—practically the same as ten years ago. Rhode Island is 7.7 against 8.4 ten years ago. The total number of illiterates in the United States is estimated at 5,516,693. Among the whites in the South it stands at 8 per cent of the population, and among the Negroes 33½ per cent. There has been encouraging gain among both classes.
The last news from Durham, New Hampshire, is that there are 170 students out on strike, comprising practically all the members of the three lower classes of the College of New Hampshire, and the members of the senior class have passed resolutions supporting the lower classes. And all this because a student, the president of the sophomore class, was suspended for ringing a false alarm of fire on the chapel bell. The president of the college has refused to recognize him, and hence a strike. There are strikes on the railway, with more threatening—sympathetic—strikes in the newspaper offices and elsewhere. It is an age of striking.
It is probable that a joint resolution of Congress, appropriating more than a million and a quarter dollars for the temporary relief of the flood sufferers in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, will pass. A bill has been introduced also to appropriate thirty million dollars for maintaining, raising, and protecting the levees of the Mississippi and its tributary rivers. Surely something ought to be done to give the people of the valley protection.
The Sunday "Oregonian" of May 5 says that it will be the aim of the World's Christian Citizenship Conference which meets in Portland under the auspices of the National Reform Association in 1913, "to secure more stringent Sunday laws." The same paper also tells us that the Seventh-day Adventists are opposing the Sunday law propaganda of the National Reform Association.
The present pope is said to have just completed one of the greatest works of the church, a complete codification of the laws of the Roman Catholic Church. It has been under the direction of Pope Pius, and in constant progress for eight years. It involved the codifying of every law, every papal bull, and every papal act pertaining to the authority of the church from the beginning.
King Frederick VIII of Denmark, brother of the queen mother Alexandra of England and of the dowager empress Dagmar of Russia, dropped dead while walking the street in Hamburg, May 14, and Christian X, his oldest son, was proclaimed king the same day at 3 P.M. King Frederick was sixty-nine years of age.
In Visalia, California, at the recent election, 994 votes were cast against the saloon, and it is estimated that 500 of those were cast by the women; ninety-five per cent, it is said, of the women's vote was cast in favor of the anti-saloon régime.
The Food Value of Rice
The consumption of rice is increasing rapidly, and also the land on which it is grown. A few years ago Louisiana was considered the principal State for rice cultivation, but it has been grown successfully in Texas, Arkansas, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Alabama, and California. Its home consumption is rapidly increasing. A clearer understanding of its food value has been propagated by the Rice Association of America. That is good. Rice is an excellent food. Its growth as a food ought to increase with California raisins.
The Gospel in Japan
THERE is a striking article by the editor, Mr. Hamilton Holt, of the Independent, in that journal of May 9, on "Japan To-Day." We note one item. He declares that there are two chief hindrances to the spread of Christianity aside from world-wide causes, and that these are "the present diversity and antagonisms of denominations, and the quite obvious discrepancy between Christian profession and practise." And he quotes from the Rev. D. B. Schneider, at the conference last year of the federated missions:
"While Christianity is making a little progress, other great forces like that of nationalism, the revival of Shintoism, the renewed activity of Buddhism, agnostic or anti-moral literature, and practical materialism, that seem to work in deadly opposition to it, are gaining in strength. Moreover the passing of leadership into the hands of the Japanese church is giving us missionaries a secondary place, and to use the homely phrase, it is difficult 'to play second fiddle' enthusiastically. The encouragement also which we receive from the home land is not great."
There is more real need of vital Christianity, entirely apart from all nationalism. If missionaries would go to Japan from England and America, not to represent England and America, but Christ; there would be greater fruits.
